Category Archives: Really

Take a minute to check it out. And realise that for men, Halloween choices are virtually infinite. And that for women, the choice is ‘woman in sexy outfit’.

Seriously? THE WOMEN’S ‘COSTUMES’ DON’T EVEN LOOK LIKE WHAT THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE!

Seriously, check it out.

Ever seen a pilgrim look like that bloke? Why, yes, indeedy. Ever seen a fucking pilgrim dressed like that woman?? Are you frickin’ kidding me? No wonder they burnt them as witches.

The bloke looks like a fucking Angry Bird, right? You get that the woman is just a woman wearing a dress with an Angry Bird on it??? Right?

And scary? Because excuse me, but aren’t Halloween costumes supposed to be scary? Sure, the male mummy is scary. The female mummy looks like she’s just stepped off a Lanvin catwalk. Scary, yes, but not in the traditional sense.

And quite apart from anything else: DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING COLD IT IS THIS TIME OF YEAR?? I know which Melon I’d prefer to be and I’m Northern.

And just in case you think the kids are left out of this idiocy, check this out. No prizes – no, none at all – for guessing which type of ‘child’ is hiding behind that werewolf mask. And no, no prizes for guessing the same for the Reaper mask. Oh, and just in case you were really confused, no prizes for guessing which type of ‘child’ is wearing the pretty dress, complete with swirling skirt and out-turned leg. Because nothing says scary like a pretty dress and an out-turned leg.

I am beyond intrigued by this show and I’ve yet to even watch more than minute-long clips.

It’s not showing in the UK, but I keep coming across little commentaries on it which are entirely not what you’d expect.

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically intended as laugh-at-the-hilarious-antics-of-the-underclass TV in the same vein as Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and virtually every other reality TV show, with the exception of those laugh-at-the-stupid-posh-people ones.

It features the eponymous star, Honey Boo Boo, 7 (I think), and her out-and-proud ‘redneck’ family. Mama is fat, the 17-year-old has just given birth to her first child and dad’s family nickname is Sugar Bear. Paints a picture, don’t it? Yup, these people have the word ‘trash’ struck through them like a stick of Blackpool rock.

Or do they?

Because from the stuff I’ve seen, this family seems to be getting a lot of things right.

The show presents a family who love each other and are fully integrated as a family unit. Dad Mike, despite working seven days a week, is a fully paid up member of the clan, doing what he needs to support the family financially but also partaking of every aspect of his kids’ lives. And the man sure loves the lot of ’em. They spend their time having fun; not just allowing it to stray into their lives, but actively seeking it out, making time for it quite deliberately. The kids seem happy and secure. Sure, there’s a lot of bodily emissions going on, but who’s counting that when you’re building a mud slide?

What’s especially intriguing for me is the girls.

Honey Boo Boo (or Alana), is an enthusiastic pageant entrant. Along with fun-killing feminists everywhere, I have deep problems with the concept of children’s pageants and, as I’m generally speaking to fun-killing feminists here, I won’t need to explain why. Suffice to say, I have doubts that pageants’ focus on beauty (and underage sexiness) is the best way to foster girls’ self-esteem in any meaningful or healthy way. That way eating disorders and body dissatisfaction lie, right?

Except Honey Boo Boo, along with her sisters, is on the chubby side. She is as unself-conscious about this as she seems to be about every aspect of her appearance or, indeed, herself. The older daughters (though I’m not sure about the oldest), are refreshingly the same. They are goofy and funny and seem to spend none of their time thinking about how they look; they just get on with being themselves.

Sorry, hit publish by mistake there.

As I was saying.

These girls are a joy to watch, as far as I’ve been able to watch them. They live and play in a world seemingly devoid of pressure to look a certain way, or if there is pressure, they seem entirely unaware of it. Mama clearly plays a part in this; her ‘take us as you find us’ attitude extends to everything about the family, including the way they look. The only time I’ve heard weight mentioned was when Honey Boo Boo was corrected by her father that the family weren’t ‘fat’, they were ‘pleasingly plump’.

I’m sure the idea was that we were supposed to laugh at them, but they’re so free and unburdened by themselves that you can only laugh with them. It’s a nice feeling.

Mama’s ‘take us as you find us’ attitude seems, beautifully, to extend to others as well. They are entirely accepting of a gay uncle (whilst over-fond of gay stereotypes, but still), and when the oldest daughter’s baby is born with an extra digit they appear to accept it and move on.

Sure, the family are by no means perfect; from feeding Alana Red Bull to being convicted felons, they have their issues. But, hey, what family doesn’t? And I’ve not seen most of this family’s ‘not perfect’, so I’ll add that disclaimer to all of this.

But like Balpreet Kaur, whose dignified reaction to her attempted public humiliation for daring to be hairy made the OP of her photo look more like a turd squeezing out of the bottom of humanity than he did already, it is possible – just possible – that this family may rise above what they were set up for.

I will beat you to a bloody pulp to show you how much I love you for it. Deal?

Thought inspired by this:

‘I am sure every girl can recall, at least once as a child, coming home and telling their parents, uncle, aunt or grandparent about a boy who had pulled her hair, hit her, teased her, pushed her or committed some other playground crime.

‘I will bet money that most of those, if not all, will tell you that they were told “Oh, that just means he likes you”. I never really thought much about it before having a daughter of my own. I find it appalling that this line of bullshit is still being fed to young children.

‘Look, if you want to tell your child that being verbally and/or physically abused is an acceptable sign of affection, i urge you to rethink your parenting strategy.

‘If you try and feed MY daughter that crap, you better bring protective gear because I am going to shower you with the brand of “affection” you are endorsing.’

‘Coach': Yeah, it’s really good, we’ve got a few girls in the junior team now and four or five younger girls coming through who have a real chance of making the team. They’re really holding their own against the boys.

My girl can outpace virtually every boy in her class, her ball work can be exquisite at times, her tackles are full on and her strategic knowledge of the game is becoming awesome.

I spent yesterday at the Go Feminist conference. The conference was, obviously, about feminism, but it was more specifically about attempting to connect the dots between the different forms feminist activism can take; thus, the conference blurb:

‘Go Feminist recognises that we live in a world of interlocking hierarchies and oppressions. It is part of our feminist mission to dismantle this.’

I don’t think we’d argue with that, would we? Over in Boogieville, we’re all about dismantling interlocking hierarchies and oppressions. It’s what we idly dream of whilst dunking marshmallows in hot chocolate and watching Thelma & Louise.

And the programme for the conference reflected its aim. Amongst others dealing with black feminism, and faith and feminism, and women and economics, there was the centrepiece of the conference, a session on how to connect movements (with a particularly interesting bit by Rahila Gupta) and an accompanying workshop, and a further workshop addressing intersectionality and how to deal with oppression when it comes from multiple directions all at once.

And, you know me, I hate to criticise. Well, I don’t, but I do hate to criticise people like the people who organise stuff like this: big, conference-thingies, with loads of people, all talking about feminism. Really, what sort of shit criticises women who do that? Well, as Rahila Gupta would no doubt point out, the sort of shit who feels that her area of marginalisation hasn’t been addressed at all. And who doesn’t feel that just because she has privilege in other areas, she should be silenced.

Now I’m privileged in many ways and I have no problem with feminism addressing racism, anti-capitalism, and the inequalities of the legal system, and what all of these things mean for women.

But.

Now, I should preface this by saying obviously I didn’t go to every workshop so I may have missed something, but nothing in the title of any of the workshops lead me to believe I did.

It really came to me during the Sexism in Popular Culture plenary session, when the question was repeatedly being asked ‘what can we do? What can we do to change the way people think; about feminism, about equality, about the way the world works? How does this shit change?’ And I just wanted to jump up and get all Whitney Houston on their arses.

Y’know, all ‘I believe that children are the future (warble, warble etc etc)!‘

In all that intersectionality, in all that ‘connecting movements’, there was not a whiff of the word ‘motherhood.’ And what connects women if not the concept of motherhood?

And I mean all women, not just those who become mothers. Because whether you like it or not, whether you have children or not has very little to do with whether this issue will impact you as a woman. Just ask any childless woman how often she has to fend off intrusive questions about why she’s childless. Just ask any woman who can’t have children how often she has to lie to people just to keep her sanity. Just ask any woman, on becoming a mother, how many assumptions she had to fend off to find her own way as a mother. Just ask any woman of child-bearing age who’s career is, surreptitiously, stalled because of an assumption that she’ll ‘get up the duff’ any minute now (from my own experience in the legal world, women did routinely get pregnant the minute they made partner – because that was the only way to do it; it was universally acknowledged that getting pregnant before being made a partner meant you didn’t get made partner).

You don’t need to be a mother to be affected by motherhood because, childless, the patriarchal myth of motherhood will still come and get you. You just need to be a woman.

Oh, I know, I know. Feminist parenting is my ‘thing’, of course I’d notice its absence. And of course before I became a mother and had no intention of ever being one, the absence wouldn’t have occurred to me either. But isn’t it glaring? When you think about it? Even for a minute?

So much of what feminism is about intersects with motherhood at really, really fucking direct points. And mothers are marginalised in all kinds of ways that intersect with feminism, and huge swathes of mothers worldwide are marginalised more than I could even shake a fucking stick at and a huge part of that marginalisation arises directly from the fact of their motherhood. And even white, middle class feminist mothers are marginalised because other mothers don’t get what the fuck you’re on about and feminism tends, it seems, to ignore the elephant in the room. Whilst providing a creche and offering workshops for children…

Oh, I don’t want to whine. A hearty congratulations to all the organisers for all the many things they got right (which was basically everything else – not least actually getting up and doing the whole thing in the first place). I enjoyed the day, I really did. It just spoiled it for me is all.